DailyDirt: Arithmetic Is The Third R?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

International math tests seem to consistently show that Americans don't have competitive math skills. We can argue that these tests don't measure real-life capabilities, but it might also be nice to see math test scores rise someday. Given the growth of online educational tools, the accessibility of good (and effective) math lessons will hopefully help to improve everyone's math talents. Here are just a few interesting links on the topic of math.

Reader Comments

international testing

what does it mean to have an average math score for a nation to rank number one versus thirty-one? how can you average millions (or thousands) of kids' math scores on a single test and make policy decisions based on that....?!

I think the biggest problem with math today or physics is that they are divorced from real world problems, math was invented to describe the world around us but that is not what is taught in school.

Math teachers should start teaching math by offering a real world problem that can be solved using that math, that is what drives interest in my opinion, the problems should also be about current tendencies.

Re: Re: Re: The Three R's

They've been around since the 30's and there is really only 1 R, the others are W and A......Writing, Arithmetic and Reading had the acronym of WAR, and that didn't sound right. The other acronyms didn't work either (RAW, ARW or RWA) so they went with phonics and got the 3 R's